Prolétaires de tous les pays, unissez-vous!
Otatoskewak ota kitaskinahk mamawestotan!
Workers of all lands, unite!

*Days of action need broad unity
*Marathon pulp & paper strike ends
*BC Communists hold 32nd Convention
*Good news on MAI front - Editorial
*Golden Pigs for corporate hogs
*Working women fight for jobs and justice!
*Educators for Peace to meet in Montreal
*Unwanted allies: the extreme right & the MAI
*1938 - 1998: Some struggles for unemployed
*Chile: 25 years after the coup
*Israel at 50: The Injustice Continues!
Reds on the Web:
http://www.communist-party.ca

Corporate and political elites who live "high on the hog" were honoured for their excessive greed at the 2nd Annual Corporate Golden Piggy Awards, held March 29 at Victoria's Roxy Theatre. A snout-wearing audience of 300 snorted their approval for winners in each of eight categories. Local talent like the Flying Nuggets, the Raging Grannies, and the Gender Equity Spice Piglets (kicking off their world tour), provided entertainment.

Award organizers had a difficult time choosing winners for this year's even, due to the seemingly unchecked outbreak of Mad Pig Disease affecting so many corporate heads and political heels. "Diane Francis" and Bank of Montreal head Matthew Boarit exhibited serious symptoms of the disease, duelling onstage over one of the large gold pig trophies for which they had been nominated.

Some of the big winners were: McDonald's, for their McLibel case against two UK activists; Kelloggs, in partnership with CIBC, for their bank coupons in cereal box promotion; and Bombardier Inc., which recently received an $87 million grant from the federal government.

Brian Mulroney, former senator Andrew Thompson, and the Helicopter Deal went toe-to-toe for the Both Feet In The Trough award, with the Helicopter Deal emerging as the winner. "Jean Chretien" was on hand to accept the award, explaining that "When de people comes to search for me, I will need da helicopter to rescue me." He left the stage after saluting his fellow APEC leaders with a blast of pepperoni spray . . .

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In two years, the party:

*has established new clubs in Victoria and the Vernon-Salmon Arm area;
*registered as the CP(BC) under BC's new Election Act;

*ran candidates in the 1996 provincial election and
last year's federal campaign;

*moved to new offices;

*hosted the recent Central Convention of the Communist Party of Canada.

*Over 6,000 anti-MAI flyers were distributed
on the street and to public events by Party clubs
during the first three weeks of April,
as part of the CPC's Canada-wide campaign on the issue;

*Party leader Miguel Figueroa spoke at seven public forums
and received good media coverage during his tour of the province
leading up to the convention. . .

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Reports of yet another delay in finalizing the Multilateral Agreement on Investment are great news, although we still think it's too early to start popping the champagne. The weasel words of OECD negotiators ("suspension of the talks") are designed to make us believe that nothing will happen until this fall. But in fact, the talks will continue very quietly, far from the watchful eye of citizens' groups.

The six-month delay gives the labour and people;s movements in all OECD countries more time to increase public awareness and to pressure governments to kill the deal permanently. Popular concerns in British Columbia, for example, led to a unanimous vote in the provincial legislature to hold broad public hearings. Even Gordon Campbell's 110% pro-big business Liberals voted for the resolution, claiming that the "benefits of MAI" will become apparent during the hearings. (Campbell and his Howe Street buddies could probably find an up-side to the Black Death!)

But here's the tough part. Even if the massive struggle to stop the MAI succeeds - and we think it will - the line-up of trade and investment "liberalisation" deals stretches around the block. If the transnationals can't get everything in one giant bite, they'll chew us to death in smaller morsels like the new Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA). Working people in Canada and across the planet must unite to win an entirely new set of policies. That means much more than demanding "social charters" or add-on clauses to "protect" the environment of labour rights. The experience of Europe shows that such agreements are quickly tossed aside by big capital.

What we need most is a fundamental challenge to the power of capital itself. Every effort to block the agenda of the transnationals, every fight to defend our social programs and our labour and democratic rights, must help move working people into the longer-term struggle for a world free from exploitation, oppression, pollution and injustice. This May Day, we need to keep our "eyes on the prize" - the vision of a socialist world!

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Women have been particularly hard hit by the resurgence of neoliberalism and the globalization of world markets. This May Day, let us celebrate the women responding with a renewed enthusiasm towards organizing unions.

First the bad news. While women constitute 50% of the world's population, they control only 10% of its economy. Women own only 1% of the world's land, yet they perform over 66% of the work.

According to the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, 40% of women's jobs in Canada are now "non-standard" - part-time or temporary work, self-employment, or multiple jobs. By December 1996, women made up 70.4 % of part-time workers in Canada. . .

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"For a Culture of Peace" will be the theme of the North American Congress of Educators for Peace, coming up August 21-23 in Montréal. The initiative for the Congress was launched last November by members of Educators for Peace, the Quebec Peace Council, the Canadian Teachers; Federation, and other groups.

The Congress is one response to an appeal by UNESCO to elaborate a culture of peace, in opposition to the many rising forms of violence in today's world. It will include workshops on themes such as disarmament, environmental violence, the deterioration of public health care, creating a culture of peace, and the inter- dependency of peoples and countries. Participants are welcome to make presentations at the workshops.

Registration for the Congress costs $65 for organizations and individuals, or $25 for students, youth under 30, and seniors.

It's been almost 25 years since the September 11, 1973 coup in Chile. Democracy was supposedly restored in 1989 when presidential elections were held and Augusto Pinochet Ugarte lost to Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin.

However, on March 11 of this year, General Pinochet, the chief architect of the coup, became "senator for life." How could this shameful event take place? Pinochet made sure that it would when he and his fascist junta wrote the 1980 Constitution, which stated that any president who has been in office for more than 6 years could become senator for life.

On March 10, he handed over the reins of Commander-in-Chief of the Army to General Ricardo Izurieta so he could start his new career as a senator. The event was covered with much hoopla by the Chilean press, which almost made him look like a national hero. He now sits in a Parliament to which he was never elected, a Parliament which he closed 25 years ago.

While all this took place, scarcely a hair was ruffled on his well preserved head. Although some Chileans commented that he is getting old (he's 82) and losing his faculties, the evidence seems to be to the contrary. He did not get in without a fuss, however. Inside the Senate chamber, conscientious senators such as Christian Democrat Jorge Lavendero, Party for Democracy member Sergio Bitar, Socialist senator Ricardo Nuñez and deputy Fanny Pollarolo marched in with pictures of well-known personalities murdered by the fascist regime.

Senate President Sergio Romero threatened to prevent the opening of the Senate unless the protestors laid down their placards. Nuñez replied that "We will lay down the photos only because we have never prevented either the functioning of this institution or of democracy." Pinochet looked on calmly, almost bemused, waiting for the scuffle to be over so he could get on with the job.

All this might have been avoided if the Concertacion (coalition) government of current President Eduardo Frei had had the political will and foresight to band together with the left parties, including the Communist Party, during the December 1997 elections. Such an alliance could have elected sufficient numbers to defeat the stranglehold of right-wing senators, including those designated by Pinochet, in order to change the Constitution once and for all.

Outside the Parliament building, more than 3,000 protestors clashed with police. Among them were people who had fought long and hard against Pinochet, suffering the loss of family members during the long years of fascism; people who had been tortured, exiled, robbed of their homes and livelihoods; people such as Communist Party leader Gladys Marin, and Sola Sierra, President of the Association of Detained and Disappeared People. Hortensia Bussi, widow of former President Salvador Allende was also there and commented, "Today is a day of mourning."

The infamous guanacos (water cannons) were out in force despite the fact that the protest was not on the scale of those of the 1980s. Gladys Marin was slightly wounded trying to break through police barriers and Sola Sierra was knocked down by the force of the water hose.

At the end of the day, about 200 people were detained by police. In spite of the bravery of these protestors, most progressive Chileans felt the event was pitifully small. Filmmaker Marcos Enriquez commented, "The rest of the world is more anti-Pinochet than we are. CNN and the foreign press have been much more critical than our national television."

Despite its anti-Pinochet stance, the international press refers to Chile as "the jaguar of Latin America" because of its relatively low unemployment rate and its so-called phenomenal economic growth. Unemployment is officially around 5% and people can usually find a job, no matter how low the pay. A job, of course, may mean flogging ice cream bars on the bus or selling whatever you can in the street.

On the surface, Chile glitters with shiny new American chain stores. Blockbuster Video, Pizza Hut, and the like are blossoming along with new malls known by the English phrase "shopping centre" rather than the Spanish "centro de comercio". Shopping in Chile, just as in Canada, has become a favourite pastime. Sitting in Santiago's glitzy Plaza Vespucio, you feel more like you are in Anywhereville, USA. The indigenous Chilean culture is fast being replaced by American schlock.

Beside this corporate wealth, Santiago's large shantytowns are a shocking reminder of the grim reality of grinding poverty and deprivation experienced by much of the population. Most people live without any kind of health coverage; the basic insurance or FONASA (Fondacion Nacional de Salud), as one Chilean put it, "won't pay for the taxi to the hospital."

The public education system has reached rock bottom - if children are to receive a halfway decent education, their parents must send them to private schools. Teachers are among the lowest paid professionals in the country, and most work at two jobs just to make ends meet. Most older citizens and pensioners live on the verge of poverty. The majority are in debt up to their eyeballs, paying for basic expenses such as food and health care on their credit cards.

The trade union movement is a shell of what it used to be, and the left and progressive movements face tremendous odds in the political arena. In spite of these odds, the Communist Party is now gearing up for the next Presidential elections at the end of 1999. They know it will be a long, tough battle to regain even a portion of what they have lost, and the reactionary electoral laws make it virtually impossible for them to win, even if they ally with other progressive groups.

However, the Communists have experienced some growth in the youth and student movement, and their members have been elected to key positions in student federations. Between five and six thousand people showed up on March 8 for the Women's Day march in downtown Santiago, and the same number came out the following Sunday for a cultural event to protest Pinochet's investiture in the Senate. The Party newspaper El Siglo can be found in almost every kiosk in Chile, a refreshing, alternative view in a sea of reaction, a view which increasingly more Chileans are seeking.

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After nine months on the picket lines, 2,400 west coast pulp and paper workers have voted 59% to accept a new collective agreement with Fletcher Challenge Canada (FCC). The deal will set the pattern for upcoming bargaining with other employers in the industry.

The agreement was reached on April 14, after two days of meetings between the company and the two unions involved, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) and the Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers of Canada (PPWC), with Vince Ready acting as mediator.

The unions had been widely criticised in the corporate media for their "unrealistic" refusal to accept Fletcher Challenge's demands; the same media claimed that the agreement was virtually the same as one rejected overwhelmingly two months earlier. But speaking to People's Voice, PPWC president Garry Worth said the final deal included some improvements over earlier proposals.

Going into the 1997 negotiations, Worth said, the unions were seeking improvements to job security, benefits and pensions, and wage increases. But the key issue was job creation measures such as shorter work time. In fact, Worth said, he called this "strike for jobs," calling on the industry take advantage of the monies available under the NDP's Jobs and Timber Accord to hire new employees in the forest industry as a result of changed work processes, such as a shorter work week.

The company was demanding full flexibility - the right for management to order any employer to perform any job in the plant - plus 365-day operations and a six year collective agreement.

The flexibility issue is about "more than who screws in a light bulb," said Worth. "It's an issue of who operates a plant with just a one or two page collective agreement. It means eliminating the rights of workers to have any input or to bring grievances." The "full-flex" concept is similar to quality circles or the "co-management" schemes covered in the April issue of People's Voice, Worth pointed out.

The striking workers were receiving $400 weekly strike pay. While this is more than many workers or unemployed live on, agreed Worth, "it's not a big wage" compared to the regular earnings in the industry. Still, he said, the strikers got used to living on this amount, and their fellow members in other locals were quite willing to have their dues increased by $95 to help generate money for the strike fund.

As the strike went on, however, FCC "came into a lot of cash." Through the sale of its 51% share in Timberwest and a paper mill in Wisconsin, the company earned about $1 billion. At the same time, Worth said, the market for pulp and paper products "went totally against us." FCC boasted that it could make more money on interest than through operating the three strike-bound mills.

The late January report by mediator Colin Taylor was overwhelming rejected, Worth said, largely because it included provisions for a pension clawback which the company had not even asked for in negotiations.

Ready's report eliminated the clawback and included some other changes. "Fletcher Challenge didn't win everything," Worth stresses. "The management rights clause they wanted was ditched, and we did get a task force on apprenticeship and employment in the industry." The agreement expands protection against layoffs while outside contractors are doing work to include all workers (previously it just covered maintenance employees), as well as double time for the Christmas statutory holidays, a $2,750 signing bonus, 2% wage increases in each of the last five years of the agreement, and some improvement in benefits.

Many PPWC members were "bitterly disappointed that Fletcher Challenge got so much," Worth said. "But no strike can go on forever. You have to reach a conclusion sometime." Now that bargaining is to begin with other employers, he said, "the industry is already complaining that this deal is too expensive!"

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With utter disbelief, I have watched the many media tributes to Israel s 50th Birthday, such as To Life, Hollywood s glorification of the Zionist State. To the ordinary Canadian, bombarded by the mainstream media s anti-Arab bias and stereotyping, Israel s "fight for peace" seems deserving of sympathy and support, especially when such tributes ignore the oppression of the Arab peoples, especially Palestinians.

While Zionists celebrate Israel at 50, the people of South Lebanon are commemorating the second anniversary of the massacre of Qana, where Israeli occupation forces in Southern Lebanon bombarded a UN-run refugee camp killing over 105 women, children and elderly. For this carnage Israel apologized, citing "human error," while also claiming that Hezbollah militants fired at Israeli forces from an area near the camp.

The facts tell a different story, one of cold-blooded brutality and an attempted international cover-up involving Israel's number one imperialist ally, the USA. According to Robert Fisk, a Lebanon based investigative journalist for The Independent newspaper, "an Israeli army operation to plant booby trap bombs inside the United Nations Zone in Southern Lebanon led to the Qana massacre [on April 18, 1996] in which well over 100 Lebanese civilians were killed while sheltering in a UN base." Journalists like Fisk, UN officials and organizations such as Amnesty International have all uncovered the same truths. The bombardment of the camp was of a very specific pattern to have been "accidental," and the presence of an Israeli reconnaissance plane over Qana at the time confirms that this was a well-calculated and premeditated action.

Qana was an explicit and well documented example of Israeli state terrorism, but certainly not the only one. Throughout its history, Israel has killed tens of thousands of civilians, dating back even before the UN Partition Plan of 1947. At present, Israel shells villages in South Lebanon daily, often killing or injuring civilians. Most incidents go unreported unless the people of South Lebanon defend themselves.

As for the Occupied Territories, neither the Oslo Accord nor the ensuing side agreements have stopped the Israeli practice of ethnic cleansing, especially in the West Bank and Jerusalem. This policy has been an integral part of Zionist ideology since Israel s creation, first practiced by buying Arab homes and lands (with the tacit support of big Palestinian landowners), then by intimidation, expulsion, house demolition and terrorism. The infamous Deir Yassin massacre set fear in the hearts of the Arab population and compelled them to flee to neighbouring Arab countries.

A recent article in the South African Communist Party's organ, Umsebenzi, describes the Zionist policy of ethnic cleansing: "Thus the Jewish character of the country had to be realized through the transfer of some 800,000 Palestinian Arabs out of their homeland. The expulsion was carried out during the 1948 war and the years that followed."

The process of "Judaization" as Umsebenzi called it, was not only limited to lands "won" in 1948 but was extended to territories occupied in 1967. According to Umsebenzi, "while subsequent international pressure has prevented Israel from expelling the Arab population as it did in 1948, an apartheid regime that gives the Jewish settler population all possible privileges, and denies the indigenous community its most basic rights, has been implemented in these territories."

With the moral, financial and military support of international imperialism, Israel defied implementation of over 60 outstanding UN resolutions; annexed the Syrian Golan Heights after its occupation in 1967; occupied Lebanon in 1978 and in 1982; committed the Sabra and Shatilla massacres of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese civilians; erased 418 Palestinian villages from the map; jailed thousands of Arabs, the majority without trial and under torture; and continues to confiscate Arab lands and routinely demolish Arab homes.

In the occupied territories, Lebanon, the Syrian Golan heights, and the rest of the Arab world, Israel's 50th anniversary is a solemn commemoration of Al-Nakbah - The Catastrophe. On this occasion, we must support the demand for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state - the only viable short term solution - but also advance an alternative to the Zionist-apartheid regime of the state of Israel, just as our South African comrades did in the struggle against apartheid. That alternative is the establishment of one democratic, secular state in all of Palestine. In the meantime, let us remind all Canadians that the colonial-settler character is still the main underpinning of Israel, and that expansionism, ethnic cleansing, erasing villages and state terrorism are what defined its formation and made it imperialism s beachhead in the region.

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This May Day, workers from the Niagara Peninsula area are converging on St. Catharines for the first Day of Action in 1998. Less broadly mobilized than previous Days of Action, the St. Catharines protest, and the one in Kingston on June 8th, will set the tone and start building the momentum for a province-wide strike next fall. That one is slated to shut down the whole province, putting the boots to the corporations and the coupon clippers who back the vicious agenda of the Harris Tories.

For almost two years, the left in the labour and social justice movements pushed the OFL leadership to call a province-wide strike, the logical escalation in the fightback. This is the ripest opportunity yet to harness the anger of the millions of Ontarians who have been attacked, disadvantaged, and disenfranchised.

Yet instead of picking up the head of steam building in community after community where angry workers are losing their jobs, homes, hospitals, schools and services, the OFL's organizing drive seems limp and lifeless. The momentum is slowing. Something has changed.

In a recent memo to local unions, Steelworkers District 6 Director Harry Hynd outlined what's new: "Last spring I sent a letter to all of you expressing the Steelworkers' strong concerns about the Days of Action and why we were playing a lesser role. However, the thrust and nature of the Days of Action have changed. Under the leadership of Wayne Samuelson, the new president of the OFL, there is now a clear issue direction and well thought-out strategy and a firm commitment to the NDP.

"NDP Leader Howard Hampton is one of Labour's key speakers at both Days of Action, and an NDP organizer works in the Days of Action headquarters, lining up New Democrats to attend the events... the entire OFL executive board now decides on the place, date, and strategy."

"Finally," Hynd says, "I want to now urge all of you to get involved... Any questions, call Michael (Lewis)."

What has changed is the political balance of forces at the OFL. Staffers and volunteers who supported independent labour political action, and who worked closely with Paul Forder, the former OFL Organizational Director and key organizer of previous Days of Action, are being cleaned out.

Wayne Samuelson was the choice of the Steelworkers, the "pink paper" caucus and the right-wing of the NDP) to beat Forder and the militant sections of the trade union movement, including the left. The new OFL leadership has unilaterally ended labour's equal partnership with social justice reps in the top decision-making bodies, supplanting it with the OFL Executive plus one from the Ontario Coalition for Social Justice.

What's at stake is a powerful people's movement, with labour at its centre, with the capacity to upend the neo-conservative agenda. Slipping from our grasp is the chance to force politics to the left, by popularizing labour's social justice platform and forcing every political party to respond when the writs are dropped. Coming into view is a provincial election in which a right-wing Liberal victory appears increasingly likely, as the mass "in-the-streets" opposition is narrowed and channelled into ballot box support for the NDP.

At the last two regular OFL conventions, delegates clearly instructed their leadership to build and broaden the Days of Action hand in hand with labour's social partners, and to continuously escalate until the Tories winced, and then blinked. To win a very close vote over Paul Forder last November, Samuelson was compelled to give full support to a province-wide strike. Now he must deliver.

The secrecy and smokescreens characterizing preparations for the St. Catharines' Day of Action have to be cleared away. Real organization must begin immediately for Kingston in June, and across the province for the showdown this fall.

Samuelson needs to open up the OFL's closed shop approach to the protests, restoring the partnership with the social justice community that made previous Days of Action so effective. At the grassroots level, it's up to Labour Councils, union locals, the Stewards' bodies, and the left to step in and get things moving. The Days of Action belong to the working people of this province, not to any political party. This fall's action must not be diverted by Mr. Hynd, Mr. Lewis or anyone else. The stakes are too high!

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Women have been particularly hard hit by the resurgence of neoliberalism and the globalization of world markets. This May Day, let us celebrate the women responding with a renewed enthusiasm towards organizing unions.

First the bad news. While women constitute 50% of the world's population, they control only 10% of its economy. Women own only 1% of the world's land, yet they perform over 66% of the work.

According to the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, 40% of women's jobs in Canada are now "non-standard" part-time or temporary work, self-employment, or multiple jobs. By December 1996, women made up 70.4% of part-time workers in Canada. On average, women earn 65.1% of what men earn. Young women workers are worse off than 10 years ago 71.2% aged 18-24 earn less than $24,000 per year.

Immigrant women and women of colour make up the bulk of female workers in low wage sectors like factories, domestic work, hotels, restaurants, and clerical. In the garment industry, 80 to 85% of the workers are immigrant women and women of colour. Canada placed second only to Japan in a 1996 survey of OECD countries for incidence of low paid employment for women.

"Women are under attack like never before," said Nancy Riche, Vice President of the Canadian Labour Congress, at the recent CUPE women's conference in Ontario. "Globalization has reinforced inequalities for women around the globe."

In Thailand, women made up 80% of the two million workers who have lost their jobs as a result of the Asian economic crisis. In Latin America and the Caribbean, only 16% of the female workforce are in the industrial sector. Indonesian women in Nike sweatshops are "Just Doing It" in some of the most inhumane working conditions in the world. In the maquiladoras of Mexico, women must routinely prove they are not pregnant as a condition of employment.

According to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, which represents 125 million organized workers, about 70% of the world's 1.3 billion poor and illiterate people are women. The most effective way to fight for women's economic equality, is to unionize workplaces to fight for liveable wages, better working conditions, human rights and equality. The right to unionize is being championed by women in developing countries and in the maquiladora zones, with growing international support.

Garment workers in Nicaragua have filed for union certification to demand improved wages and working conditions. Current annual earnings for the women, who make clothes for Wal-mart and K-mart, is $574, less than 30% of a small family's most basic survival needs. Women making clothes for Disney contractors in Haiti have been organizing to fight for a living wage. And shrimp workers at the Pesquinsa shrimp plant in El Salvador are organizing for better wages, health and safety conditions, shorter and regulated hours of work. Unfortunately, most of the women active in these organizing drives have been fired. But they are still fighting, mobilizing global support for their struggles. The recent International Nike Mobilization drew thousands of people to actions to protest sweatshop conditions.

In Canada, the involvement of women in the labour movement is undergoing a transformation. Private sector union membership has been ravaged by the FTA and NAFTA as manufacturing shifts further and further south. The public sector has been under vicious attack since the Canadian Health and Social Transfer set the stage for the dismantling of our social safety net. Facing a falling membership base, unions are now organizing part-timers and service sector workers.

Women are active in and benefit from these new organizing campaigns. More and more women, especially immigrant women and women of colour are getting active in the broader labour movement. The Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees (HERE) Union and UNITE (Needle Trade Workers) are two good examples. According to the CLC report, Women's Work, UNITE has been successful in organizing homeworkers in Toronto, enabling "immigrant women home-sewers, who are predominately Chinese speaking, to break the isolation, develop a supportive network and gain a sense of belonging with a union."

Economic benefits improve dramatically for women who join unions. Equality gains in the 1996 Canadian Autoworkers agreement with Chrysler afforded women top-up pay for maternity leave, employment equity, and improved technical training. Pay equity in the public sector was an important gain for many organized women in the early 90's.

Women are taking up the fight to unionize and to build a global network of resistance. The fightback against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment is a beginning as we intensify the fight against corporate globalization. We must step up our solidarity work with our sisters in developing countries. We must encourage unions to organize more part-time and service sector workers. We must revisit the bank workers organizing campaigns of the 80's. As we celebrate May Day this year, let's celebrate working women fighting for jobs and justice in Canada and around the world!

(RedFem Report is a monthly column from the Central Women's Commission of the Communist Party of Canada; Kennedy is co-chair of the Commission.)

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VANCOUVER - Sixty years after unemployed workers were brutally tear-gassed and clubbed by the police on Hastings Street, the UI benefits they fought to win are being wiped out. Upcoming events to mark the 60th anniversary of the Post Office Sitdown in Vancouver will salute the heroic 1938 struggle, and demand that the federal Liberals reverse policies which deny benefits to the majority of jobless workers.

The story of the Sitdown was best told by the leader of the occupation, the late Steve Brodie, in his article "Bloody Sunday - Vancouver, 1938," written to counter the "flood of lies and half-truths" about the event. Brodie noted that over the decade starting from the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929, "over 200 police actions involving force are recorded in the press of the day - all of them aimed at repressing any protest against unemployment, hunger and homelessness."

The last years of the Depression were bleak, especially on the West Coast. The spring of 1938 saw a new round of layoffs in the logging industry, and shutdowns of pulp mills and sawmill operations. At the end of April that year, B.C. Premier Duff Pattullo closed down forestry relief camp projects, and Ottawa reduced its relief grants to provinces, so that its portion only covered relief for "able-bodied unemployed." The province cut back on relief loans to municipalities like Vancouver, which in turn slashed aid to the jobless, especially those from out of the province, a tactic adopted in this decade by the Clark NDP government. The Vancouver police also began stepping up harassment against "tin-canning" by unemployed workers. In September 1938, for example, about 150 men were sentenced to prison terms of 4-6 months in Oakalla jail for the "crime" of tin-canning.

These developments sparked an upsurge of action in Vancouver by the Single Unemployed Protective Association and the Relief Project Workers' Union, headquartered at 60 East Cordova Street. Their tactics included a legal mass "tag day" on May 15. The 1,400 people who took part raised over $4,800, issuing tags which read "I Favour a Works Program.." But while the event showed the support of citizens, it did little to meet the needs of thousands of unemployed workers.

In the strategy debates which followed, Brodie wrote that "the Communist Party fraction, working in the ranks of the unemployed, stressed the value of a solid, united group. They knew that any `Robin Hood' or partisan style of action would bring down repression equal to that of the Third Reich."

On the afternoon of May 20, members of the groups took over the Post Office, the Art Gallery, and the Georgia Hotel, while the city's newspaper editors were sending reporters to chase down details of "a five-legged calf born at Abbotsford," as Brodie wryly comments.

The audacious plan had been presented by Brodie, at a meeting of division leaders of the unemployed groups in a Cambie Street rooming house. Despite media attempts to whip up a backlash of public anger against the unemployed, the citizens of Vancouver responded to the sitdowns with enthusiastic support and donations of food.

The occupation of the Georgia Hotel ended quickly. This action faced several problems, Brodie pointed out, including the temptation of an adjacent beer parlour and the fact that the hotel was private property. After two days, city council voted enough money to feed the men over the next weekend, by which time it was expected that Ottawa would act on the problem.

Division 3, led by Norman Harris, had taken over the Art Gallery, taking immediate steps to protect the valuable paintings and sculptures. As Brodie wrote, "Under extremely crowded conditions, 100 men maintained perfect discipline for 30 days in spite of constant harassment by police..." Like the Post Office occupation, this sitdown was ended by the police on June 19. These men were not clubbed, but they were tear-gassed as they surrendered.

Brodie's Division 1, and Division 2, led by Jack Lucas, took over the Post Office. Given the supportive public crowds outside the building, police chief Colonel W.W. Foster, could only plead with the occupiers to "go home." Speaking on behalf of the men, Brodie "assured the chief that if we had homes to go to, we would hardly feel it necessary to occupy public buildings."

Three times during the occupation, the police ordered the men to vacate. The sit-downers offered to submit to arrest and face trials, if all were treated equally; "Being equally guilty, we expected equal punishment," as Brodie said. That wasn't good enough for the civic, provincial and federal governments, however. Their preference was for a riot, "necessary to provide the pretext for a few leaders to be railroaded for inciting, rioting and destruction of property. This had always worked in the past, and support from press and pulpit was assured."

On Bloody Sunday, June 19, Brodie was awakened early and warned that large numbers of police were gathering outside. Many of the cops were "passing around mickeys at a great rate," he recalled, "evidently trying to catch up with those already drunk. Laughing and poking each other's ribs with their billies, they seemed to be anticipating their job with great relish. I remarked at the time that they seemed like juveniles about to set fire to the family cat."

RCMP inspector Major Hill read a proclamation ordering the men to depart or face forcible eviction. As spokesperson, Brodie replied that the occupiers were quite willing to submit to arrest. The bizarre confrontation continued with Hill saying that he had "no orders about arrest," and Brodie then offering to march with his men to any suitable place to await their trials. The only answer to this offer was the statement that "We are here to keep you moving when you hit the street. There will be no arrests."

The standoff lasted another ten minutes, until Staff Sargeant Wilson threw the first tear-gas bomb. The sit-downers had lived in the Post Office for a month without damaging the building, but now "three thousand dollars worth of plate glass" was broken to help clear the air. "From both ends of the lobby the RCMP attacked, equipped with gas masks and plying their whips in joyful abandon like the notorious Cossacks."

Brodie was quickly singled out for special attention, dragged from the building and beaten mercilessly until an officer noticed a movie crew filming the attack. A citizen took Brodie to St. Paul's Hospital, where he was unconscious for almost 24 hours, waking "to find that, surprisingly, I was not under arrest."

In an epilogue to Brodie's story, Maurice Rush, at the time a leader of the Young Communist League, tells how he was aroused at 6 a.m. by YCL members with news of the attack. The scene was deserted when he arrived a few minutes later, but the smell of tear gas was still in the air, and broken glass everywhere. The police had also tear-gassed the Cordova Street office, forcing the unemployed to take their injured comrades to the Ukrainian Hall at 805 East Pender St., where an emergency hospital and kitchen had been set up. YCLers and members of the Ukrainian Labor-Farmer Temple Association (forerunner of today's Association of United Ukrainian Canadians) and other progressive ethnic groups quickly arrived to help.

The police brutality shocked the public and lifted the movement to new heights. A group of unemployed workers had already left for Victoria, and more were to follow them that very evening for a mass delegation to the Pattullo government on June 20.

As Rush wrote, "By Sunday afternoon, 15,000 people had gathered at Powell Street grounds [present day Oppenheimer Park] in a giant protest rally... The rally ended with thunderous approval for a resolution demanding that the Pattullo government act immediately to provide work and wages - or resign." At an even bigger rally that evening, 30,000 people gathered at the CPR pier to send off another 100 jobless workers for the delegation.

The unemployed were met with a rousing welcome by people from all over Vancouver Island. But the provincial government held firm. The People's Advocate, the communist weekly which preceded the Pacific Tribune and People's Voice, reported that "Everywhere you go in Victoria there are police. City police on the street corners, plainclothesmen lolling in the doorways of public buildings and big stores, RCMP riding through the streets. And all because 500 destitute single unemployed men, without thought of violence and certainly with no intention of damaging property, are in this city to demand of a government which promised them such things, work and wages."

The Great Depression dragged on for more than another year, coming to an end only with a greater horror, the Second World War. The decade-long spectre of mass unemployment in the major capitalist countries finally disappeared, as millions marched off to the battlefields or were hired to build weapons.

In every decade since, unemployment has risen, from around 4% in the immediate post-war years to 10-11% through most of the 1990s. Today the "official" unemployment rate has dropped to just below 9%, but hundreds of thousands of jobless people are left out of that figure, having given up hope of finding work. An estimated three million Canadians are either completely unemployed, or survive on part-time, temporary, or casual jobs. Just as Karl Marx proved in his Capital and other studies of capitalism, the scramble for profits forces employers to replace live labour with machinery, throwing more workers into the "reserve army of the unemployed." Today's jobless are now faced with the destruction of the UI system won by those of Steve Brodie's generation; less than 45% of Canada's unemployed workers now meet eligibility requirements, even as the employment insurance system builds up a multi-billion dollar surplus.

In a more ironic update on this anniversary, B.C.'s NDP government faces sharp criticism from anti-poverty and unemployed groups for its harsh attacks on the poor. Like the Pattullo government, the NDP today can blame Ottawa's funding cuts, but its campaign to blame the poor for so-called "welfare fraud" have only served to divide working people under attack from the corporate sector.

Plans to commemorate "Bloody Sunday" are now being organized; for information, call George Gidora at the BC Communist Party office, 254-9836. This year's People's Voice Victory Banquet will also have the Post Office sitdown as its theme. The Banquet is set for Saturday, June 20, at the Ukrainian Hall where the wounded unemployed were treated. Tickets go on sale this month at the PV office, 706 Clark Drive.

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A well-attended demonstration opposing the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) was held recently in Salmon Arm, BC. The organizer was a local progressive working with the Council of Canadians. The demonstrators were a mixed group: politically conscious activists, as well as a majority of young, rather naive, individuals concerned about free trade. Working the fringes was Wes Mann, organizer of the Preferred Network.

Mann was handing out fliers for conspiracy advocates David Ickes, Ted Gunderson, and Cathy O'Brien. Whenever he could, Mann would strike up a conversation with one of the demonstrators, then write down their name and phone number. I knew who Mann was. His Preferred Network catalog carries several dozen books and tapes promoting the usual New Age fare: cancer cures, spiritualist prophecies, UFO tales, and so on. But much of the catalog consists of materials promoting right-wing militias and right-wing conspiracy theories, and books by notorious fascists and antisemites such as Eustace Mullins.

I went over to Mann, who did not recognize me, and began to question him. Within minutes he was telling me that the MAI was the work of a conspiracy organized by the mysterious "Black Nobility" and the "International Bankers." The anti-Jewish code words were obvious. Soon Mann was telling me that the antisemitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was authentic, that the Nazi Holocaust had never occurred, that the contemporary Jews were not Jews at all but descendants of the Turkish Khazars, and that the fascist Eustace Mullins was "a brilliant researcher."

How many anti-MAI protestors have come to believe the proto-fascist conspiracy views promoted by Mann and others? It is impossible to know. But some local progressives have begun to be seduced. They come to meetings with David Ickes' books tucked under their arms, or with copies of Canadian League of Rights periodicals, or with lists of ultra-right Internet web sites to share. The extreme right is wooing Canadians over the issue of the MAI, just as they did during the 1991 Gulf War. Now, as then, some on the left have been duped, but the real danger is that far larger segments of the politically inexperienced will fall prey to these lies.

The International Advocates for Health Freedom (IAHF), based in Hollywood, Florida, in the context of opposing the MAI, has been generating lists of extreme-right web sites. These include the viciously anti-socialist and pro-militia John Birch Society; the Special Forces Underground, a clandestine group within the US military openly advocating an end to democracy; and the Committee to Restore the Constitution, which has published the work of major fascist writers, and whose members include antisemites Eustace Mullins, and Ron Gostick. These sources are being disseminated among such diverse circles as health food advocates, Canadian Action Party members, and some anti-MAI activists.

In August and November 1997, The Canadian League of Rights (CLR) reprinted articles critical of the MAI. The CLR is controlled by Ron Gostick who began political activity in the early 1950s by making contact with noted antisemites, racists, and anti-Communists such as Wesley Swift and Gerald L.K. Smith in California. Gostick's Canadian Anti-Communist League eventually became the CLR, a major vehicle for antisemitism and Holocaust denial for 30 years.

Even further to the right, William Pierce of the National Alliance wrote Thoughts on Free Trade in January, 1998. The National Alliance is the successor organization to the American Nazi Party. Today it is the largest openly fascist formation in North America. Pierce maintains that global free trade would lead to "enforced racial integration of our schools," "floods of non-White immigration," and the "subservience of White people." The free trade issue is, Pierce claims, "really a racial issue," and is the result of a conspiracy by Jews and socialists of the New World Order.

These groups say nothing about the MAI's fundamental impact on labour - the destruction of trade unions, sinking wages, and rising levels of underemployment. There is nothing about the impending collapse of the social services that we have paid for through our work and our blood, and no concern that what little influence working people now have to influence government policy will be stripped away.

What alarms the far-right about the MAI is its internationalism. Through this opposition, the far-right makes contact with naive progressives and the politically uneducated. Canadians are justifiably concerned that the MAI will attack national sovereignty, effectively raising transnational corporate power to the power of government itself. But those who focus primarily on narrow nationalist and cultural issues, while ignoring labour and class interests, can become easy prey to the far right. Without a working class analysis, national pride can slide all too easily into national chauvinism, a benchmark of fascism.

Communists are by definition internationalists. It is no accident that our motto is "Workers of all lands, unite!" Communists understand that peace, prosperity and social justice require international cooperation and solidarity. We know that the globalization of capital, as represented by the MAI, means the very opposite of these necessary values.

But for the far right, all internationalism is the enemy. For them, the MAI is an expression of a shadowy New World Order run by a hidden conspiracy of the Illuminati, of bankers, Jews and socialists. Or it's a secret plot of the United Nations - which they always characterize as evil and controlled by Communists hell-bent to deprive North Americans of their guns and of their freedom. In this paranoid world view, the reactionary John Birch Society can come to hold hands not only with right-wing militias, Nazis and Jew-haters, but with New Age UFO buffs and conspiracy junkies, health food proponents, and patrons of alternative medicine. In this melting pot of unreason all conspiracies become one. Through the promotion of conspiracy thinking, and the denial of the fundamental laws of capital, fascists seek to recruit the unwary to their position.

The true anti-MAI struggle is against the unfettered power of capitalist transnational corporations and their inevitable tendency to limit democracy and justice in favour of profits. Not every organization that claims to oppose the MAI is necessarily our ally. The "enemy of my enemy" is not always my friend. Part of the anti-MAI campaign must be to show how global capitalist domination and the far-right organizations - apparently in opposition - are simply two faces of the same drive to destroy the power of working people, not only in Canada, but throughout the world.

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